


Open Source, Insert Foot

by JediDiplomat



Series: Geek is Sexy [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-27
Updated: 2010-03-27
Packaged: 2017-10-22 12:48:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/238165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JediDiplomat/pseuds/JediDiplomat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam finds out Dean's dirty little secret</p>
            </blockquote>





	Open Source, Insert Foot

Dean surveyed the damage. It was bad, it was beyond repair, and yet—he could rebuild it.

He felt Sam come up behind him, “It's gone man.” There was an awkward silence and then Sam added, “don't worry, we'll get a new one. Better than before. What matters is that we're still here.”

Dean nodded, still not saying anything. How could he explain to Sam? Sam, who thought he was only good enough to hold the guns and shoot things. This was his baby, he'd done so much work making sure it worked just right. That there was never a hiccup, never a daemon that couldn't be stopped. He'd put so much of himself in it, and now it was gone. Fuck all his plans were on there. He winced as the cover cracked apart in his hands. Maybe, just maybe he'd be able to recover some stuff. If he was lucky, but when were Winchesters, and him in particular, ever lucky.

“Dean...” Sam said and there was another breath, another hesitation and fuck Dean hated it when Sam did that. Weighing his words as if he was going to break apart.

“What?” Dean asked harshly, not in the mood to deal with one of Sam's chick flick moments.

“I wouldn't let Bobby junk the Impala. It's...she's sitting at Bobby's waiting for you. I wouldn't let him, I mean, I think she could be repaired.”

Dean nodded, but if the laptop was anything to go by, he wasn't so sure he could fix either of his creations.

* * *

Dean grunted as he wedged himself underneath the dash. This had been a helluva lot easier when he was seventeen and had upgraded the old eight track to the tape player without his dad noticing. Though looking back on it, he wondered if Dad had just let him think he hadn't noticed until they were on the road. Dean snorted, Dad always did have a way of making Dean do things he wanted but wasn't willing to do himself. Dean shook his head as much as he was able underneath the dash and grunted again as he realized that he couldn't reach the damn wire.

“Need help?”

Dean slammed his head on the dash, “Christ on a crutch Sammy, you trying to give me brain damage?” He demanded, sliding out just enough to see Sam's shaggy head.

Sam snorted, “not sure there's anything left to damage.”

Dean clenched his jaw but said nothing. “Well, smart ass, wanna hand me those wires?”

Sam leaned over him and fed the wires down the dash, “figures you would set up the radio before anything else.”

Dean rolled his eyes. Like he was worried about the fuckin' radio. He was tired of the weak ass signals they had at the motels they stayed at and was trying to fix it. He'd found some boards that explained how to make your own wireless access point, which would then give them the boast they needed to find an actual ISP. He figured that it wasn't really an access point but a signal booster but he'd take it. The only shitty part was that it ran off the car battery, but he figured that he might be able to set it up in a passive mode, like a car alarm, that only went on when their laptop's wireless was active. Which of course brought him to another problem. They didn't exactly have a laptop to use with this.

He'd been trolling ebay for something decent. Something he could use as a shell and a few other ones he could probably rip apart for parts. Still, nothing was turning up and he was starting to think he might actually have to go and purchase a brand new laptop from somewhere. Which meant they couldn't do it here, as he didn't have that kind of cash and he'd be damned if they blew Bobby's reputation in the town. Bobby was too good of a friend.

Sam cleared his throat and Dean realized he hadn't come back with the proper retort. “So...I was thinking I could take one of Bobby's cars and get us a laptop.”

Dean raised his eyes heavenward and wondered why it was that God hated him so much. Really, was it too much to ask for one small fucking break. “Yeah?”

Sam nodded, “Yeah, we need one. Figured I'd head over to Sturgis and pick one up. They have to have a Best Buy there right?”

Dean glared at Sam. “You got two grand on you? Don't shit where Bobby sleeps man. That's not cool. We got Dad's fakes, head to Pierre or something. That way it can't be traced back to Bobby.”

Sam nodded, “yeah, forgot about that. You gonna be ok here by yourself?'

Dean rolled his eyes and finished connecting up the 3G modem to the Impala's antenna. He bit back his original retort and said “I'll be fine.”

“Cool, well, uh, I'll be going.”

Dean counted to five and then said, “Hey Sam!”

“Yeah?” Sam asked, leaning back into Dean's field of vision.

“Don't get Sony, man. They're pieces of crap and not worth the money.”

It was Sam's turn to roll his eyes, “sure Dean. I'll only buy American.”

Dean counted to ten but by then Sam has already left. Dean shook his head, wondering exactly what Sam was going to come back with and realized that it didn't matter. Dean would fix it, whatever it was. He always did. Besides, he had bigger things to worry about, like how the hell he was going to hack a 3G network without anyone noticing.

* * *

Dean finally wandered back into Bobby's house, drying his hands on a garage towel he'd found out back. Bobby had been pretty damn insistent that he wasn't allowed to work on the Impala after dark. Dean had argued with him, told him the yard lights were plenty enough light and Bobby had still told him no. Dean had told Bobby that he wasn't his kid and Bobby had just shook his head. It hadn't been Dean's best moment and since then he'd obeyed Bobby's one rule and quit when the sun went down. Dean figured it was Bobby's way of making sure he didn't work himself to death.

Dean let himself into the house and grabbed a beer, finding Sam in the living room a shiny silver laptop in his lap. Dean bit back the sigh, reminded himself that Sam had gone to fuckin' Stanford, the guy could be trusted to buy a laptop and wandered over to find out how'd it gone.

Sam glanced up at him. “Hey, man. Check it out, not the best on the market, but not a bad system. Runs XP Pro, figured that'd be the closest to what you were using on your laptop that you wouldn't have enough problems switching over.”

Dean clenched his jaw but said nothing. Sam was just being Sam and he was being irrational about the entire damn thing. Besides, he really did hate Vista so XP Pro was a bonus. “Probably a good idea.” Dean said, his voice even. If Sam noticed he didn’t say a thing.

“Yeah, just getting our programs on it. Did that guy that gave you the last one give you a disk of programs?” Sam asked, looking up at him, “because I can install all this and get us going.”

Dean opened his mouth and then shut it. Now was not the time to explain that most of those programs were his creation. Not to mention that linux programs weren't exactly designed to work with Windows. He wondered how hard it would be to port them over. A few of them weren't so much new programs but plug ins for others. Like the goldwave emitter. That was just a plugin for Audacity. “Nah, but most of them were free off the Internet.”

Sam nodded, “yeah, ok. I'll take a look and hit a few boards.”

Dean nodded, took a swig of his beer. “sounds good.”

* * *

Dean glanced over at the other bed and then went back to the computer. Sam was still asleep, and this was his chance. Sam had been weirdly protective as if it was Dean's fault that they'd been hit by a fuckin' semi and the laptop was toast. He smiled grimly; he'd deliberately picked this hotel because it had decent wireless. The list was in his journal, the places they'd stayed that had decent wireless and the places that didn't. Not that he was sharing the list with Sam and soon it wouldn't be necessary. He hoped. He just had to download the right program and then set it up. Actually he had to do two things. One was that he had to log into the modem in the car and set that up so that it would crack the nearest 3G data service. The second thing was that he had to set up the wireless crack program he used before he figured this out. No sense in wasting the ol' girl's battery if there was a good wireless signal coming from the hotel or someone's house.

Glancing over at Sam one last time, he took a sip of his coffee and got to work.

He was a couple of hours into it and swearing profusely as the wireless crack software wouldn't work no matter how he tweaked it when he felt a pair of eyes on him. He glanced up and found Sam staring at him from across the table.

He swallowed and glanced around, not sure what to do. He could claim it was porn but he didn't think Sam would believe him, especially not after that crack about Sam watching the porn with all his clothing on. “I--” he stopped, what was he supposed to say?

“So...how long have you been hacking?” Sam asked, and there was a deceptive calm to his voice that Dean was immediately suspicious of.

“What do you mean?” Dean asked, narrowing his eyes and taking another gulp of his coffee, which was now cold.

“You know exactly what I mean.” Sam said, and yeah, Sam was pissed. Dean just couldn't figure out why.

“Dunno, a few years maybe.” Dean said.

“Years?! You've been doing this for years and what? Just figured that I didn't need to know about it?” Definitely pissed.

Dean shrugged. “Pretty sure you wouldn't care if you did.”

Sam just stared at him for a good long time, “Dude...how can you say that?”

Dean glared, “made it pretty clear how you felt about the EMF.”

Sam frowned “what are you talking about?”

Dean shook his head, this was useless. Sam wasn't going to see anything he didn't want to see. He pushed back from the table. “Just forget it, man. It's nothing, something I do to pass the night.”

Sam shook his head, “no way, Dean. No way are you getting out of this without telling me what you're doing.”

Dean rolled his eyes, “what they fuck do you care anyway, Sam? When the fuck have you ever gave a shit to what I do?”

Sam stared at him and Dean immediately regretted it. But fuck, it was true. Dad had at least seen what he could do, had known what he brought to their team. That it was more than just guns and cars. That he had real merit to the team and his contributions had been noted. Yeah, ok, he'd missed his brother, missed hunting with someone else and most days that was enough that Sam was with him. But then sometimes it was as if Sam couldn't care less if he was there or not. Dean was just there to clean the guns and keep the car running. Fuck if that didn't hurt as he wasn't the fucking idiot Sam thought he was.

“Dean,” Sam said and his expression had crumpled. Dean clenched his jaw, but fuck this wasn't about Sam. Or at least wasn't about Sam in that Sam didn't get to be the victim here.

“What Sam?” Dean snapped.

“Could you have tracked the demon without Ash?” Sam asked.

Dean glanced away. He might have, if he'd had the setup that Ash did. That laptop had been sweet, and he'd wanted to swap specs with Ash but he couldn't. Not with Sam there. “Maybe...” he admitted finally.

“Why didn't you just say so?” Sam asked.

Dean shrugged “couldn't do it with the machine we had and I didn't have the parts to build something that could. Not in the time frame we had. Just easier.”

Sam nodded, “and this?”

Dean glanced around again “this what?” he asked, trying to figure out what the fuck Sam was talking about.

“What are you doing in the middle of the night playing on my laptop, Dean?” Sam demanded.

Dean sucked in a breath. Right, it was Sam's laptop, not that he'd actually paid real money for it, but still it was his. “Just fixing something.”

“What?” Sam pressed.

Dean let out a breath, “you really wanna know?” At Sam's nod, he continued, “I'm trying to configure a program that will hack wireless encryption. So when we get your half-caf double mocha latte with blueberries we can check for cases at the same time. Without having to pay.”

Sam nodded, “any luck?”

Dean shook his head, “the program wasn't really designed for Windows, so I'm trying to force it. It's not working so well.”

Dean waited for the smart ass comment that didn't happen. He gave Sam a suspicious look but Sam was simply staring at him. “What?” he snapped.

“You were the one that set up your laptop. There wasn't any other guy, was there?” Sam asked.

Dean shrugged again, feeling more than a little exposed by the interrogation, “you were always harping on me about stealing shit.”

Sam shook his head, “I knew a guy in Stanford that was a computer science major. He showed me his box once, but...I didn't think about it much. But you and he, you're a lot alike.”

Dean snorted, “right, I'm like one of our Stanford geek buddies.”

Sam grinned, “you might be surprised.” After a minute Sam grinned, “so...what else can you do?”

  



End file.
